Study of Geographical Variation in Kiln-Drying Behavior of Plantation-Grown White Spruce

White spruce (Picea glauca |Moench| Voss) is one of the most important tree species for reforestation in Canada. Over the past 30 years, hundreds of thousands of hectares were planted. Plantation-grown wood will become an important source of supply for the lumber industry in the near future. Plantation wood is generally known to have a greater proportion of juvenile wood than that from natural stands. For this reason, quality attributes of lumber from plantations might be considerably reduced, especially after kiln-drying. However, these quality attributes might be influenced by the origin of the seed sources used for the reforestation program. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the genetic variation in the effect of kiln-drying under restraint on shrinkage and warp of dimension lumber processed from 26 provenances originating from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Region. Two drying treatments were applied, i.e. conventional and high-temperature drying. Analyses of variance showed no significant differences among provenances for any type of shrinkage (longitudinal shrinkage, shrinkage in thickness, shrinkage in width) or warp (bow, crook, twist) measurements. For the effect of the drying treatment, it was significant only in the case of shrinkage in width